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Comment by ch4s3 | Hacker News Reader

Almost everyone who has ever lived in the past was parting a society where there was one communal view on almost everything. Having your own view is strikingly new.

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You can read texts dating back to 2,400 years ago (and beyond). I strongly recommend them in fact. And suffice to say, no there was no "communal view" on most things, let alone everything. For one interesting example, Socrates chose not to write anything down. Most of everything we know from him came from his student, Plato. The reason is that he felt that words would end up distorted and, unable to defend themselves, may be used to misrepresent the views or values of the speaker. Obviously Plato disagreed.

Or another fun one. One of the first acts of the newly formed Athenian Democracy would be to charge Socrates with "corrupting the minds of the youth" and "impiety." And they ultimately decided to kill him over this, on a split [democratic] vote. Needless to say, views varied - to an absolutely extreme degree. To imagine there communal views on almost everything is just such an absolutely bizarre a notion to me. What led you to state/believe this?

Citing a few Athenians is basically the exception that proves the rules. Socrates in particular was executed for straying too far from community dogma. And this is one single city star during its golden age of philosophy. The whole history of humanity is a lot bigger that Greece in the 4th century bc.

Socrates was unique in his wisdom, yet hardly in his trend for debate. In literally all of human history for which we have even a semblance of reasonable record, there was widespread debate (which not infrequently would escalate to extremes) over essentially any topic imaginable. Even in topics that trend towards "natural" taboos, like religion, there has invariably been extreme debate.

Again I don't really understand how you could think people just held "communal" views on "almost everything" in the past. Can you offer literally even a single supporting example?

There is morning fact widespread debate for as long as we have a written record. The first several hundred years of writing are basically commercial records, royal edicts, a few prescriptive religious texts, and some poetry.

For example for most of human history, your community had a religion and set of etiologies explaining how the whole world worked. To disagree was to cast one’s self out of that community or to be cast out.

That's simply untrue. What today we refer to as misinformation and conspiracy theory was just rumors from the traveling merchant.

The most obvious examples of this is in ancient history how few political issues were actually campaigned on compared to today. Today every politician needs a public stance on hundreds of issues. Do you think that applied in ancient Rome or the various city states in Greece? People didn't care as much. There was less exposure to information, less granularity, and less individual empowerment.

Often times what separated politicians wasn't even the issues, it was their client base and direct familial connections. Issues were a secondary consideration.

Today, it doesn't matter what connections you have if you have the 'wrong' stances, even if trivial in fact (they don't have to actually believe or pursue them in office outside of token gestures) the performative dance politicians have to go through today is strikingly different than any time before. Thats directly because of homogenization of thought and how intensely voters value it.

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